These were apparently a mother and daughter, and they were listening to a young man who sat with his back to Mrs.March, and leaned low over the table talking to them.

They were both smiling radiantly, and as the girl smiled she kept turning herself from the waist up, and slanting her face from this side to that, as if to make sure that every one saw her smiling.
Mrs.March felt her husband's gaze following her own, and she had just time to press her finger firmly on his arm and reduce his cry of astonishment to the hoarse whisper in which he gasped, "Good gracious! It's the pivotal girl!" At the same moment the girl rose with her mother, and with the young man, who had risen too, came directly toward the Marches on their way out of the place without noticing them, though Burnamy passed so near that Mrs.March could almost have touched him.
She had just strength to say, "Well, my dear! That was the cut direct." She said this in order to have her husband reassure her.

"Nonsense! He never saw us.

Why didn't you speak to him ?" "Speak to him?
I never shall speak to him again.

No! This is the last of Mr.Burnamy for me.